Conflict: Denied Ops is a fun tactical shooter that does not deserve its negative rap.
CDO is modern-era tactical shooter with the usual Tom Clancy-esque storyline with "bad guys" with WMDs being stopped by expert covert ops operatives. In this case the operatives are two mis-matched characters, Lincoln Graves (sniper, middleaged, white, ex-Delta Force) and Reggie Lang (heavy weapons specialist, young, black); each with his own strengths and weaknesses. Together Graves and Lang make for a good team and the blue banter between the two ranges from wry to downright funny.
Character development relies entirely on the dialogue between the two ... it's a bit like a buddy movie in which you have a reserved experienced guy teamed up with a smart talking rookie ... and this works rather well. The beauty of the game is that you can take control of either character, depending on the situation: Graves for long ranged sniping and recon and Lang for the heavy firefights, especially versus the various helicopter and tank "bosses" that seem to appear just before the extraction phase of each mission. Both characters need to survive the mission for you to succeed and this reinforces the interdependence of these two.
The Conflict series of games, like CDO, gets mixed reviews ... for me Conflict: Vietnam (CV) is one of the best 'Nam games available. I have not tried the other Conflict titles, although Global Storm looks interesting, but many fans of the series dislike CDO because unlike its predessors (a) it has two, not a squad of four, characters to manage and (b) because it eschews the 3rd person viewpoint for 1st person. Having only two characters to control makes the game easier to play. That's not to say the game is easy, it is simply easier to juggle two instead of four characters and their points of view. Consequently CDO has smoother gameplay due to the simpler system used to issue commands to your non-active character. This equates to more fun and less key mashing which means you can actually enjoy playing the missions and looking around the great environments.
Thus CDO, unlike say CV, is a whole lot less work and consequently a whole lot more fun. It is still a serious FPS/tactical game and you will need to switch between your characters regularly to get through the mission. None of this suggests that playing with four characters, as in CV, is any less enjoyable but it is just more demanding. This ability to swap between Graves and Lang makes each engagement more interesting as you can approach each individual fight in multiple ways and switching regularly is recommended especially for flanking and/or providing cover fire as enemies can appear from any and all sides. Also the maps appear to be so constructed that multiple paths are available (horizontally and vertically) to defeat the enemies and reach objectives/checkpoints. CDO, unlike many similar games, is not an on the rails shooter, although objectives need to be completed in order the ability to use multiple pathways makes for a better gaming experience. The firefights in CDO are lots of fun, especially if you use, and switch between, your characters and their capabilities well.
Even though I enjoy Tom Clancy style techno-thrillers, for me the storyline of CDO was elusive despite playing the missions, watching the pre-mission briefings and cut-scenes. What was obvious was that there are bad guys out there and the mission of my two man team is to terminate them and take away their WMDs, alas the detail eluded me. What was interesting was the ability, after the first (training) mission to select the next mission and this may have lead to the narrative being muddled. You can choose to head off to Africa, South America or Siberia and the story then progresses from that point until you return for the final mission, like the first, set in Venezuela against General Ramirez. Along the way you meet (either to terminate or save) various war lords, arms merchants, and scientists.
The game save system is "user friendly" (at Normal difficulty) as you can save each mission at any point if you so choose and there is also a default system of checkpoints within each mission. Your characters take damage and although no health meter is shown you can tell when you are taking hits as the screen screen goes blurry and you fall down. You then have 3 minutes to swap characters and revive the wounded one with a hypo-gun before he dies. If both characters go down then it's "game over man".
The ten (10) missions that comprise CDO, in the order I played them, are:
o Santa Cecilia Monastery, Venezuela
o Metuwe Township, Rwanda
o ATAK Diamond Mine, Democratic Republic of Congo
o Sveta-Ostrov Whaling Station, Sveta Archipelago
o Kyrkalov Submarine Facility, Sveta Archipelago
o Kolyma Castle, Siberia
o Chemical Tanker 'The Aideed', Atlantic Ocean
o Salem Union Sawmill, Suriname
o Petro-Naviero Refinery, Venezuela
o Military Command Base, Venezuela
Together there is a good mix of indoor (factories and bases mainly) and outdoor (urban, jungle and snow) missions and times of day and the almost obligatory mission on a cargo ship. After each completed mission, you also get upgrades to your arsenal (such as under barrel shotgun for Graves and under barrel grenade launcher for Lang). Each mission is unique and seem rather long with a number of objectives that upgrade as you progress. Each mission begins with an insertion and ends with an extraction and based on my experience the extraction phase, with what usually amount to "boss fights" versus helicopters or tanks can be quite challenging.
The graphic presentation of all these varied environments is in my view excellent. Strangely, many have bagged CDO for its graphics. I find this puzzling as the maps, to even my jaded eyes, seem on par in terms of detail with those of similar genre games like Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare (COD4). Likewise the player and non-player characters look good and animate well. The environments are destructible to a degree not found in many similar games (although Stranglehold, of games I've played, has the most destructible environments). The explosion and other visual effects were of exceptional quality. Lighting in CDO is particularly well done, for example when standing outside and looking into a darkened room you will hardly see anything, but as you enter your eyes adjust and the inside looks much brighter, but then when you look back out the door you just came in, the outside looks really glarey. There were no noticable graphical glitches apart from the usual clipping issues that occur in most games and the game ran fine on maximum settings (for Nvidia Geforce 9800GT). So for me graphics-wise CDO is, in a word, excellent.
Glitches? CDO, depending on your system, has a suite of well documented issues as can be evidenced by googling the game title and "graphics problem" and/or "sound problem". [Of course you should do this before buying any PC game as there is usually one or more problems with most titles and these are usually incompatability issues with graphics and/or sound cards.] To avoid graphical crashes with CDO, including the "no signal" black screen, I would recommend (simply) restarting your PC before playing the game, especially if you have used other graphics intensive programs recently.
Criticisms? Well none really, however there is the minor irritation of the inability to change weapons, although the weapons provided, especially with the earned enhancements, do the job it would be nice to be able to pick up weapons from the fallen bad guys. However as Graves and Lang have unlimited ammo for their primary weapons there is no need to rely on enemy weapons. Also there are armoury boxes to restore depleted supplies of grenades and missiles (which are needed for those "boss fights" versus helicopters and tanks).
SUMMARY: CDO, may not be one of the Top-10 tactical shooters ever made, but it is still a fun tactical shooter with a good mix of interesting and challenging missions spanning the globe. No doubt many will disagree, but for me the look and feel of the CDO was very much in the vein of Call of Duty 4 "lite" and the negative reviews and low ratings this game has garnered, including here at GameSpot, remain an enigma.